Historically, the world’s biggest oil producers closely guarded their role as operator of their own fields — convinced they alone could deliver the engineering necessary to extract their oil on time and on budget. Increasingly, however, over recent decades those producers have been ceding that role — opting in many cases to manage their assets at arm’s length, and allowing the world’s increasingly sophisticated oilfield services companies to deliver cost-efficient production and, crucially, the oil-field innovation that Big Oil has long assumed it alone could deliver. The speed and manner in which this has occurred varies somewhat by geographic market.

The commodities industry is adjusting to a ‘new normal’: plentiful supply and sluggish demand. Consequently, over the last 18 months, a range of commodity prices has plunged, few more so than oil, which has fallen towards lows not seen since the 2008 global financial crisis.

Companies in the energy and natural resources (ENR) sector face an increasingly complex operating environment around the world, not least in the field of compliance – and especially in the area of anti-bribery and corruption (ABC).

The publication is targeted towards companies looking to enter or diversify into the LNG regasification business in ASEAN, and it will help investors understand the range of considerations that need to be accounted for in order to confidently reach FID on a new LNG import terminal that is commercially viable and able to attract funding.

In 2012 KPMG presented a paper entitled Taking the Complexity out of Managing the Expense Line which highlighted the challenge of ensuring that general and administration costs (effectively labour costs, plus some other activity related costs), get burdened accurately and transparently to the right places.

In Asia Pacific, the prevalence of subsidies and wide-spread local regulations, coupled with the uncertain energy commodity prices have led ENR companies to increasingly appreciate the importance of transforming the procurement function.

Energy and natural resources (ENR) companies are challenged by an ever-growing array of threats and opportunities, including entering more remote regions, often in fragile countries, where the state is weak and the environment under threat, labor relations are fraught with tension, and public opinion is often hostile to ENR companies.

The Energy and Natural Resources sector has become an enticing and relatively easy target for cyber attacks. Companies now not only face cyber attacks from hacking groups, script kiddies and hactivists, they are also threatened by state-sponsored agencies with limitless resources.